Let’s suppose you had knowledge of an impending storm that had the potential to destroy everything in its path. This very same storm was 24 hours away. What would you do to spread the message to your family, friends, and neighbors? You might phone them, email them, drive to find them or tell everyone you know to spread the word. All rational, sensible actions to take. Would you quietly call just one person and tell him to secretly meet you so that he could pass your message on for you?
This is exactly what we are meant to believe God did. With our eternal salvation on the line, God chose to speak in secret with one person at a time (Moses, Abraham, Joseph Smith, etc.)Â in order to spread the word. Convenient that for most of God’s or his minion’s appearances there weren’t many or any witnesses.
We are told that Jesus was born by an immaculate conception. Says who, Mary? How difficult would it be for a woman who may have bore another man’s child without the knowledge or, I’m assuming, consent of her husband to lie? Is this really that difficult to believe? Remember this was the bronze age, a time period filled with illiterate and ignorant people ruled more by superstition than reason. Imagine further that to keep up the subterfuge upon his birth, the child is told he is the son of God and was born from a virgin mother. The lie becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
Am I suggesting this is what happened? No. I don’t know and neither do you or anyone (I’m talking to you Christians) who suggests they do. I do believe that this is FAR more plausible a foundational story for Christianity than Jesus being born of a virgin mother, curing the blind, walking on water, dying on the cross and resurrecting three days later thereby washing away all my naughty deeds. This leads us to the title of this article, religion is a setup.
Why would a God purposely put into motion a set of circumstances so preposterous, so witness-less, and then penalize mankind for not following it blindly; and by blindly, I mean just on faith. Think about it. If you were going to hold people eternally accountable for their actions, wouldn’t you at least give them reasonable assurances that what they were being asked to do was what you truly intended for them to do? You wouldn’t leave your true meaning shrouded in mystery . Your expectations would be clearly defined and verifiable.
You would never couch something so important in riddles and decades old hearsay. If there truly was an all powerful and all knowing God, he/she wouldn’t either.
It is a good question as to why God has not just “plainly” revealed himself to all men in some manner that is so clear that all objections are silenced. However, I think that the Bible suggests that there is much less of a problem with how much evidence we have and a much greater problem with how determined we are to interpret the evidence in a manner that points to anything but God. I know that you are not prepared to accept the Bible as true, but you should at least know that it purports to give an answer. For example, one day a voice from heaven said something to the effect of “This is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him.” If true, pretty powerful evidence. Yet the Bible says that many that were there said “It thundered”. I believe that the real problem that all men have is not that there is a lack of sufficient evidence, but that men have answers that they will permit and ones they won’t. The existence of a holy Creator deserving of our worship and obedience is one that most men will not permit. Therefore, the problem is with the bias of the audience, not the absence of sufficient revelation. In my mind,the main reason that men don’t look for God is that they are afraid they might find him.
It is a little bit like saying the problem in the O.J. trial was the lack of sufficient evidence, rather than the predisposition of the jury to acquit him.